It’s been so wet lately on the south coast of the UK that I half expect to see adverts in the local press that read, “animals required in pairs for epic ocean going voyage”! Today is no exception, it’s been steadily deluging all night and all day. The sky is a dull leaden grey and it’s lit by that gloomy half light that you get when the sun has been taken captive by bad weather.

I’ve just finished my latest painting and as usual I’m feeling that dissatisfaction that seems to haunt most of my work at the moment. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just not that good! It’s not what I want to achieve and yet how to achieve what I want, seems to elude me, tantalisingly close but always just out of reach.

I think part of the problem is that I seem artistically afraid of the dark. By that I mean that I seem to have a watercolourist’s way of applying colour. This shouldn’t really come as much of a surprise to me, as my first tentative steps into the world of colour were in watercolour when I was a boy.

As many of you know, the difference between applying colour in watercolour and applying colour in oil, is that a watercolourist will traditionally work from light to dark, but when you work in oils the received wisdom is to work from dark to light, applying the darkest colours first. I know this isn’t always the way, but in general I think that it is true.

My problem is that I seem to be pathologically averse to putting down dark enough shadows and contrast, which results in my having to endlessly darken subsequent paint layers to get enough tonal contrast. I don’t seem to trust the paints ability to cover all that darkness!

So I’m going to try out two different traditional methods of achieving this. The first is “grisaille”. This means effectively painting the whole work in black and white first to get a good tonal image and then overpainting with colour. Vermeer used this method for Girl With a Pearl Earring. Here’s a great example from: http://www.penroseart.com/vermeer02.htm

I’m currently working on a portrait using this method and if it’s successful I’ll post some pic’s. To be honest I’m not sure I have the patience, so it might not be for me, but if it helps break my tonal timidity I’ll try anything once! If that doesn’t work I can see myself doing some in-depth research into renaissance chiaroscuro.

Anyway… the latest work is a landscape. Yep, I know I once vowed never to touch landscape again… I may re-vow that vow again soon, but I love this part of Eastbourne. When the sun sets over the marshes it lights the tips of the reeds so beautifully that I wanted to have a go at painting them. Pure inspiration, not common sense, just inspiration and sometimes you’ve just got to follow that feeling even if you are uncertain of completing the task that you are inspired to do! Inspiration is a motivational force like nearly no other. If Paul Simon hadn’t felt strangely compelled to go to Gracelands then the album Gracelands may never have been made. Bob Dylan had a similar compulsion to withdraw before he wrote his best work. Inspiration focuses our minds and gives us the strength to withdraw from distraction and push on with a project that we can feel divinely appointed to achieve during one of those shaft of light experiences. So even if it makes no logical sense, an inspired idea is always one that should receive great respect and be given serious consideration.

That said, whilst I enjoyed the process of taking the reference shots with my youngest son (apart from deep frustration that a DSLR can’t capture what my eye can), I’m not sure that the resulting image was that great. However! I learnt something, and every painting (or experience) that teaches us something constructive is a great success!

Bits of it I like, but the uptight stuffyness of other bits I find deeply irritating. The old renaissance Tuscan proverb that says “every painter paints himself”, may indeed be true, but not necessarily comforting! We probably do “paint ourselves” in a way, but that doesn’t mean we have to accept that, or that change isn’t possible. I push on with each picture I paint in the hope that either I will change and my art with it, or I will find myself in my art and be at peace with who I find.

At great risk to the photographer’s hand and aged phone, I got this shot of a bonfire I had this morning. It seem to have a bit of Tolkien flavour, with shades of Mount Doom to me. The more literary types may seen Dante or Milton, I see Peter Jackson. Anyway, it looked pretty cool…

Still not got any actual painting done (except a door and a fireplace), but I did get to photograph these really cool water pistols that my mum gave to my three boys.

I shot them (apologies for the pun) on my phone and then adjusted the values in the Snapseed app. Oh and yes they have been played with, we have all run around the garden at some point recently shouting pew pew as we attempted to soak one another with these surprisingly effective little water pistols!

Not a lot of “art” getting done at the moment, but I’ve been working on this custom guitar stand in between paintings.

It’s mostly made from pieces of plywood that were left over from the loft cupboard project. It’s finished in a warm grey colour and sign-written in chalkboard style lettering in white, inspired by the work of Dana Tanamachi (http://www.danatanamachi.com/). Just need some foam for the guitar cushion and some red velvet to cover it with now.

It’s been a while since my last painting post because I’ve been beavering away on this project and occasionally getting distracted, but the current project is finally finished and she’s ready to show to the world!

Bit of a change as this is the first time I’ve tried painting on panel, which has been a learning process. Art’s all about learning though isn’t it? Every time I use a new colour or new medium, lighting, surface, whatever, I learn something new. For instance, this project was the first time I used Peach Black. I splashed out on a Sennelier tube, and even that taught me that expensive isn’t always better as the tube leaked black oil all over the worktop, but the colour was pretty cool… literally, it was cool. Peach black it turns out has a very blue undertone and turns a sort of navy blue when blended with white, which was handy as that’s what I wanted, again, cool!

Choosing a panel was harder than expected though. Seriously, most artists seem to hold on to the secret of which panel they use like it was a secret handed down to them from centuries of past masters. In the end I opted for ply. There were some concerns about delamination if it gets damp, but hadn’t planned on making a boat out of the stuff, just painting on it. For that matter any surface is affected by damp. So I gave my ply a couple of coats of gesso (another new experience) and got to it. Gesso it also turns out is not a mystery. I don’t need to melt any rabbit skins or blend it from a recipe found in Il libro dell‘arte by Cennino Cennini (great book though). I just bought a pot and slapped it on… carefully, I slapped it on carefully and artistically.

Honestly there is so much mystery about this and that, what you can do and can’t do as an artist and some of it can be downright wrong. Boris Vallejo for instance once mentioned, in something I read when I was younger, that true artists never mix with white, they prefer yellow. Never mix with white… now it was a long time ago, so I’ll give Boris the benefit of the doubt I may have read it wrong, but one single stupid comment can have students tied in all sorts of knots, and good practical books on the subject – apart from Ralph Mayer’s Artists Handbook – are hard to find.

After that little rant, if you know any great books on the oil painting process please share them as comments.

So, where was I, panel and gesso. Yes, panel – cheap, easy to buy and to cut to size yourself, or you can ask the timber merchant to cut it for you, a good merchant will cut it for a minimal charge or for free if you’re buying a sheet. I would advise paying the extra for the top quality stuff though, the cheaper stuff has more gaps in between laminates which are undesirable in the long term, but fine to use to practice on. Gesso – buy a tub and paint it on. That simple. The one I bought is water soluble and just needs a little fine sanding between coats. If you want to do it the Renaissance way then rub the gesso down (made according to Cennino’s rabbity recipe of course) with a cuttlefish, if you haven’t got a cuttlefish, then a very fine wet-and-dry or sand paper will do. The more coats the better, but I think three should do.

Anyway, to the painting.

Initial drawing from photo’ and light under painting. In future I think I’ll aim for much deeper colour and more contrast, maybe even a complete sketch in black/burnt umber and white with full contrast.

The “sock puppet” under painting, basically just an attempt to get the panel covered in paint to help future layers move better across the surface.

Getting there. More colour and definition added, but still wasn’t happy about the lack of drama in the background.

Final-ish

Close up and detail

The reason I chose this photo’ of my niece Amy is probably self evident, it’s fun and I liked the colour scheme.

Still working on a new painting, this time trying panel for the first time, so thought I’d post this shot of a kitchen garden I work on. The poppies have self seeded themselves among the onions, but they are so beautiful that I didn’t have the heart to pull them out.

Haven’t posted for a while, as I’m still struggling with a portrait that I’m working on, so I thought I’d quickly post a couple of phone shots taken on a gallery trip to London the other day.

My friend Nick Archer is having a show at 60 Threadneedle Street in London at the moment, so we got invited up for the preview showing. Anyway, not only was it a great opportunity to spend time with Michelle and see Nick’s work, it was also lovely to see a part of London that we wouldn’t ordinarily visit. I mean, unless you work in the financial sector of the city, London Bridge and Threadneedle Street are a bit off the beaten track. In fact it’s a track only usually beaten by hand made shoes and the odd lost tourist.

But the City has a lot to offer. Poking out between the roofs of the financial sector is gilt top of Monument, a Roman Doric column to commemorate the Great Fire in 1666 and next to The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street (The Bank of England) is the impressive building of The Royal Exchange founded by Elizabeth the first and even equipped with a statue of the Duke of Wellington to boot (sorry, bad pun).

On arrival, we came out of London Bridge station with Michelle saying “Where’s The Shard? You’d think it’d be hard to miss”. It was looming behind us like an enormous monolith of glass and steel, but that’s the problem with big cities, the buildings are so large that it’s easy to miss even something as big as The Shard.

Anyway, here are the couple of tourist snaps I shot from the bridge and some of Nick’s work:

View from London Bridge.

The last one is my favourite, but at 152cm square and £16,000 I might have to make the sacrifice and let someone else buy it.